Menomena Concert

Some people shake their heads when they listen – one guys does. I can see a yellow light through his hair and he just shakes shakes shakes like an epileptic pony. A brown haired girl points one line of fingers toward the ceiling, then the other, and back. She’s reaching up over a bald spot in front of her and I am close enough to see the dark tattoo on her white back – it’s sailor style, murky like a black painting under water. Some people stand completely still listening with their pores or maybe not at all – maybe checking in with the skinny sloucher in the corner because he knows best what’s cool and will throw out smirky hints and cues. My drink is wet and cold in my hand. I’m doing figure eights with my hips again. This is the second concert I’ve been to at this venue where eighty percent of the audience is made up of boys. I look at Lincoln and wonder if he likes music that most boys like. They are so quiet in here at these concerts. Even the heavy and assaulting Japanese band we went to last time – there was some head bobbing and intersticial hollers – but mostly there was the alarming stillness of listening.  Lincoln says it’s a problem with Chicago audiences but I can’t help wondering if it’s the virus carried by boys coming out of their rooms to hear the music they fill their bedrooms or apartments with. They hunch their shoulders over the fantasies they discovered even before big wheels and their first trip to the movies and they carry them safely to this place where three other people will stand on stage and let them roll around in a kind of grass like puppies in the sun. Roll, that is, with their hands in their pockets and their mouths shut- keeping everything tucked inside with their blood and muscle and tissue and all the other things that keep them from falling over.